


Another Way Out

by FlysWhumpCenter (TheDarkFlygon)



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Blood and Injury, Broken Bones, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, POV Third Person, Prompt Fill, Rescue Missions, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22775425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkFlygon/pseuds/FlysWhumpCenter
Summary: Raihan face a challenge he may need some help with.
Relationships: Kibana | Raihan & Rurina | Nessa & Yarrow | Milo
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	Another Way Out

**Author's Note:**

> Can you believe it? I wrote a Pokemon fic and it wasn't even Earth Never Stops chapter 12. Unbelievable. It's a miracle.
> 
> This is a prompt fill for a request given to me on Tumblr by user tumblesnout:  
> "Hi!!!!! Can I put in a request?? I love your work! I’d like to see Raihan after getting injured really badly, maybe falling into a pit or a sinkhole and breaking a leg, and he gets rescued by some of the other gym leaders?"  
> Thanks for the request, friend, I hope this short thing is good with you!  
> You too can request something from me on my sideblog, @flyswhumpcenter!

Moans escape from his lips as his eyelids flutter with wings of lead. As his vision slowly comes back to him, he realizes something: even with a clear sight he won’t recognize his surroundings. There’s just too much sand around him and the storm won’t let up, he just knows it. Not that the fact he’s in a weird position tells him anything much better about his current predicament: he’d have just liked knowing a bit more about where exactly he’s found himself in. The Dusty Bowl, maybe?

Better get on with it. He feels a little numb, and maybe dumber, but hey, it shouldn’t be too hard to get back to civilisation. At three, two, one –

Moving his leg even for a little sends a stabbing pain in the entire limb. Oh, that’s going to be _fun_.

Oh well, what’s a day of training in the Wild Area if there’s no challenge to it? His team may be exhausted (that’s what he can see, at least: he must have knocked his head on something not to remember much of the training session itself), but he isn’t, and he’s never backed down in front of a good challenge, that won’t change now! Let’s go, Raihan: just pull yourself on your arms like you’ve done when climbing and—

Okay, the walls of the hole may be made of slippery sand that glides between his fingers and in which he can’t claw himself for long enough to pull himself any higher. That hole isn’t even too deep: he could very well step outside of it if he could move his legs freely. If he forces a bit on it, he’ll be able to extract himself out of it and call for a Corviknight if the pain is too much (that’d be kind of a loser thing to do, though, he has a reputation to hold as Leon’s rival!). As it stands, right now, he has no network inside that hole. That could be an issue later on.

Oh well. If he first moves his arms (which also hurt: they’re all bruised and bloody in some spots, he must have tried catching himself on something that cut through his skin, probably not to fall inside the very hole he may be currently trapped inside of), he should be fine and escape this easy-peasy. A press on the arms, then his good leg, and then—

He yelps in pain before gritting his teeth, barely realizing he can’t actually _move_ it.

It’s finally time he sees what’s all so big with his right leg. There has to be something external that’ll tell him how wrong things are. Okay, that has to be a big, bad prank people are pulling on him… or a nightmare he’s still not completely awake from. Yep, that has to be a prank because he’s otherwise very, very screwed.

Even if he gets the rock that has crashed on his leg, he doubts he’ll be able to move it like that. Well, it doesn’t cost him anything to at least try to get rid of it for now. It may even minimize the damage he’ll endure from it in the longer run, so he gathers the strength left in his arms, winces at his own wounds reminding him of their existence, and pushes the damn thing out of the way of his flesh and bones. A little something – namely the burning pain suddenly engulfing the entire limb – tells him one of them has to be at least broken, if not pulverized. Isn’t that just _fantastic_?

There’s no reason to panic yet, so he should just pull himself together and find a way out of this mess. If his team wasn’t so tired, he could’ve asked Flygon to remove the last part of the rock he couldn’t by himself and pull him out of the hole with its arms and wings. The issue with this is that Flygon is knocked out and he seems to have lost all of his Repels in the incident that has brought him in this stupidly sticky situation. Well, it’s not like he has access to anything else in his stuff, considering his bag has stayed on top of the walls, its handle making it levitate over him while he can observe it with frustration. Great, that’s just great…

He must have knocked his head too, considering he feels something wet when he touches the back of it to scratch it in his thinking process. Observing his palm afterwards only confirms what he didn’t want to see: alright, alright, that sure is blood, and that sure has to be his on top of it. Now, he doesn’t just have a broken leg: he _also_ has a head injury of some sorts and wounds on everything else. The only thing missing would be to be unable to use his arms but, at least, he can still do that. Not without feeling every single bruise and scratch on it, but he can. There has to be a low point to everything and this is the one where he currently is.

And what now? He can’t do anything, can he? He’s trapped in here because, even without the rock blocking it, he doesn’t have the strength left to pull himself out of this hole with a bleeding, smashed leg. He can’t bring anyone on his team back to health enough to get out of here. He has no signal and, as such, no way to even call for help. He better as well knock himself out one last time and never wake up, considering it’s where he seems to be heading. Sad ending to someone his strength, and man does he wish it wouldn’t come to that, but—

Hey, actually, it may not be too late. Someone will notice he’s been missing for too long, right? No selfie for a couple hours despite him being training in the desert, no Leader for the Gym’s Trainers to refer themselves to, no stupid meme sent to any group chat: someone will notice he’s been gone for too long for it not to have turned as sour as it did. He just has to wait and he’ll be fine, he’ll rise to the top again and show not even a near-death experience can stop him! Maybe that, in the meantime, his team will have rested enough to at least be able to put him out of there.

Yep, he just has to wait… and wait… and wait… and wait…

It’s going to be a long, long day…

“He’s got to be in there!” Nessa screams through the sandstorm running wild in the Dusty Bowl, trying to shelter her squinted eyes from harm. “Raihan, stop hiding, you jerk!”

“Where could he be, though?” Milo asks back, concern flowing through his veins, barely able to distinguish anything in the sea of sand.

It sounds silly to have launched a search party of two in such a harmful weather when their weather specialist is the one they’re searching for; but there’s a reason, she _swears_. Milo and she weren’t too far away from the last area Raihan had been located in through his phone, so they got sent to smell his train despite technically not being the Leaders nearest of the Dusty Bowl.

Honestly, she’d have maybe complained more if it didn’t smell like death or at least terrible misfortune around here; but it did, so she shuts it down for once (or, at least, tries to do so more than usual) and tries not to lose Milo in the sea of sand right before their faces. She, definitely, prefers the actual sea to the mineral ocean going through a hurricane right here and there.

As she thinks that, her heel slips on a rock and she almost trips butt first into a hole she hasn’t noticed until now. Lucky for her, Milo notices that just on time and manages to grab onto her and pull her to safer grounds once again. They both exhale in relief once she’s all safe and sound.

“Sword and Shield, didn’t see that coming…” She whispers behind her teeth, staring at the hole in front of them. “Thanks for this, Milo. I’ll have to pay you back for it sooner or later.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay, Nessa! Actually, I’d rather like it if you didn’t have to save me later too. Anyway, we should go back to—”

Milo suddenly freezes as he glances down the hole, gulping, with a grimace showing up in his face while he stares at a cloud of sand.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Nessa asks, staring at him, trying to decipher what caused such a drastic change. “You’re all weird all of a su…”

Her voice trails off as her own eyes glance down the hole, finally distinguishing something in the ocean. In a reflex, she holds onto Milo’s arm, as if she could fall down again if she isn’t careful enough (which, to be fair, is accurate), making what should have been a breath of relief and a job well done into a rotten surprise for the both of them.

Lies before their eyes the friend they’ve been searching for the past couple hours. Suddenly, the fact he wasn’t responding to their messages or calls makes too much sense and she’s getting almost nauseous from the faint smell of blood she can now sense despite the awful meteorological conditions. Her disgust seems to be shared.

“Raihan!!” Milo screams on top of his lungs as he goes on all four on the edge of the hole. No answer. “Raihan, do you hear us?!” He screams again. No answer.

“I’m pretty sure he’s knocked out cold, he won’t respond to you,” Nessa chimes in before her comrade can tear his vocal cords apart.

“How do we help him out, then? It looks like he’s injured too!”

Sure enough, Milo’s right: from where they are, she can see their comrade has a bloodied leg next to an also bloodied rock. If she isn’t wrong, she can read pain painted all over a pale face. Not exactly the most reassuring way to find someone who has been gone for a couple hours to a day. At least, they’re here now, and it seems Raihan’s still breathing. It could’ve been worse…

“I think my Pelipper can help him if we’re doing it carefully. You’ve got any better idea?” She suggests, already grabbing its Ball tied around her waist.

“Edelgoss should be able to help!” Milo replies, doing the same.

It’s showtime.

When he comes to, Raihan finds himself in a weird, weird place. Technically speaking, it’s no weirder than whatever hole he thought he was going to see his life come to a close in, but it sure is a place he hasn’t seen before. It’s difficult to tell things apart when he’s so bleary-eyed, but the overwhelming dominance of white assaulting his vision is a hint as to where in the whole of Galar he’s ended this time around.

Yep, that’s the hospital alright. It sure seems like one. Maybe a clinic, if it’s not a full-blown hospital.

As his vision finally clears around, which means he must have had some painkillers injected right into his system, he’s starting to notice the little things here and there: the cast on his leg (it’s bulging under his blanket, must be heavier than any gym utility he could have used), the pristine white bandages on both of his arms, the IV drip inserted into his wrist dropping transparent drops at regular intervals, the window half-opened, the curtains gently blowing, the sun shining outside.

“You’re finally awake, huh?”

He turns around and finds himself staring at Nessa and Milo, the former looking fairly angry and the second smiling in relief.

“What happened, exactly…?” He asks, his voice sounding raw and raspy even by his standard. It’s like someone has scratched sandpaper inside of his throat.

“Well, good question,” Nessa snaps back at him. “You disappeared all of a sudden and stopped giving any sign of life on social media, so Milo and I got sent to fetch you. We found you in a hole with a smashed leg and bruises here and there.”

“We got so scared, but at least, you’re safe now!” Milo chimes in, hands fiddling with his scarf. “How’re you feeling?”

“Huh… Like I just got hit by a truck…?”

“Fairly accurate description,” Nessa comments.

He scratches his head, realizing his arms still make him wince from all of the little pains accumulating into a bigger one, his fingers grazing against yet another bandage wrapped around his hair. Huh-oh.

“Hey, guys… Do you know for how long I’ll be stuck here…?”

“The doctors said two weeks, I think? They were concerned for your leg,” Milo replies.

“If you try escaping before that your own team will most likely force you back into bed,” Nessa adds, “so don’t even try.”

Well, he wasn’t going to, at least for now; but that’s just even more convincing. Also, it’s a relief to know his team is all right too. He inexplicably forgot about them until now, that’s terrible. Yep, yet one more reason not to run from the hospital on the first pair of crutches he can find…

“A doctor said he’d go see you once you were awake, so we should call for a nurse,” Nessa says as her finger graces the calling button next to his bed.

“Good idea! We’ll check up you later, is that fine with you?”

“That’s all good.”

On that, both Nessa and Milo leave the room as the call goes through, beeping along for a few moments. He watches them exit through the door opening and closing, the sudden silence almost deafening him.

Yep, here’s his next adventure for the next fifteen days. It’s not going to be the funniest, and man telling this to his fans is going to be downright embarrassing. But, sometimes, you’ve got to deal with the consequences of your reckless actions, don’t you?

It isn’t the first and it won’t be the last time, knowing himself.


End file.
